Culture Amp just became a unicorn with a US$82 million raise

Melbourne HR tech business Culture Amp raised US$82 million (AU$121m) in Series E to value the business at US$700 million  – more than AU$1 billion.

It’s the third Australian startup this year to reach the magic $1 billion valuation – “unicorn” status – after Judo Bank and Airwallex, in the second biggest tech raise of 2019 after Judo’s $400 million.

Sequoia Capital China, led the round as a new investor alongside existing backers Sapphire Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Hostplus, Skip Capital and Grok Ventures.

Global Founders Capital and TDM Growth Partners also came on board as new investors.The startup, founded in 2011, has now raised more than US$158 million, and will use the latest cash injection to accelerate global expansion and develop new products for a customer base of more than 2,500 companies, including Airbnb, Salesforce, Slack and McDonald’s.

Culture Amp now has data from more than three million employees and provides data and insights to help companies improve employee engagement, retention and performance using real-time employee feedback.

Company CEO and co-founder Didier Elzinga said the latest funding will help Culture Amp reach business leaders who also “believe that culture is the biggest lever that you have to be successful”.

“It also underpins the deepening sophistication of one of our core competitive differentiators – our platform’s ability not only to pinpoint what is going on, and what to do about it, but to also drive the change necessary to bridge the knowledge to action gap at all levels of the organisation,” he said.

Culture Amp’s expansion focus is Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia, with Elzinga adding that the business will continue to invest in building its collaborative communities, which now number nearly 100,000 people in 147 countries.

Sequoia Capital China partner Steven Ji said their substantial investment “underscores our confidence that they have the vision and the leadership team in place to help companies take action on complex workplace issues” and that the company has already “carved out a dominant niche in the global market” .